Bangkok--20 Oct--Standard & Poor's
Standard & Poor's Ratings Services assigned its 'AA' rating to Michigan State Hospital Finance Authority's $319.5 million series 2008A hospital revenue and refunding bonds and Idaho Health Facility Authority's $177.2 million series 2008B hospital revenue and refunding bonds, issued for Trinity Health, headquartered in Novi, Mich. In addition, Standard & Poor's affirmed its 'AA' rating on Michigan State Hospital Finance Authority's bonds, issued for Trinity Health. The outlook is stable.
Trinity Health's 'AA' long-term rating reflects its credit strength as one of the largest health systems in the U.S., owning and operating hospitals and related health facilities from coast to coast with 6,111 staffed beds in related acute care facilities for fiscal 2008 generating total operating revenue of $6.4 billion and having a total asset base of $9.1 billion. The health system is well managed, has good geographical and financial risk dispersion, and also has very strong financial performance and liquidity with low debt leverage.
Trinity Health, under its president and chief executive officer, Mr. Joseph Swedish, who took the helm effective Jan. 1, 2005, has made great strides in improving the overall strength of the health system by refining its organizational structure, hiring and promoting talented executives and hospital administrators with broad experience, and implementing a disciplined financial model focused, in part, on establishing spending priorities within the health system's means. Continuing improvement is evident in key areas such as operational cost management, pension funding, capital planning and treasury management among others.
Trinity Health's leadership team tackles challenges aggressively and has strengthened individual system hospitals' leadership and market position and refined and improved clinical and financial metrics used to gauge quality and performance measures. In addition, the leadership team has fully funded a previous underfunded pension benefit plan.
Financial risk dispersion among the health system's facilities is very good based on revenue and cash flow with no one local market being dominant. While there is some financial and geographic risk concentration of health facilities in Ohio and Michigan, these have historically been two of the health system's strongest markets.
Complete ratings information is available to subscribers of RatingsDirect, the real-time Web-based source for Standard & Poor's credit ratings, research, and risk analysis, at www.ratingsdirect.com. All ratings affected by this rating action can be found on Standard & Poor's public Web site at www.standardandpoors.com; select your preferred country or region, then Ratings in the left navigation bar, followed by Credit Ratings Search.
Media Contact:
Edward Sweeney, New York, (1) 212-438-6634
[email protected]
Analyst Contacts:
Kenneth W Rodgers, New York (1) 212-438-2087
Brian T Williamson, Chicago (1) 312-233-7009